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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6042900" data-attributes="member: 42582">I am strongly with Aurondarklord on this one. It strikes me as an obvious error of drafting.This sort of error occurs in statutority drafting from time to time, and statutes are drafted with far more care, by much higher-paid professionals!, than game rules texts. It's unrealistic to expect game rules to be drafted to such precision that no slippage between obvious intention and words used will ever occur.There is no rationale given, nor - as Aurondarklord points out - rationale able to be given, for limiting Atonement to evil acts only.I agree with this too. The meaning of "gross" isn't "intentional" or "deliberate". It's "excessive" or "flagrant", as in "gross negligence" (which by definition can't be intentional!).(I'm assuming that by "intentional" here we mean "intended by the paladin under a code-violating description" - for example, if the paladin hands someone a drink, not knowing that it is poisoned, and they drink it and die, we have an unintentional violation, because the paladin did intend the action under the description "handing them a drink" but not under the description "poisoning them". Nearly all code-violating behaviour is going to be intentional under some description, unless the paladin is sleepwalking or has been dominated.)What exactly counts as a gross violation would presumably have to be resolved between GM and player from time-to-time. A one-off kick in the groin, while in my view obviously dishonourable, doesn't strike me as grossly dishonourable. A pattern of such groin-kickings might be. Spitting in the face of the king would strike me as a gross violation, unless unintentional and excused via extremely non-culpable error!Here, on the other hand, I'm inclinded to disagree with you, and I think you're reading modern sensibilities back into the paladin archetype in a way that doesn't really work.By coincidence yesterday, I was reading about the sedition trial of the poet William Blake. Blake was alleged to have said, during an altercation with a soldier who was billeted near his house, "Damn the King". Blake was acquitted because it couldn't be proved that he said the words - the soldier's testimony was contradicted by the testimony of other witnesses. Had the uttering of the words been proven than Blake would almost certainly have been found guilty and sent to prison for 3 months, perhaps whipped also. This is England in 1803/4. The standards for a paladin are at least as strict!Look at Aragorn in LotR. He never mocks the steward, or the king. To a significant extent he refrains from judgement altogether, because he doesn't need to judge. There is no need to judge Saruman or Sauron, for example - opposing their deeds is all that's required of him. (This is part of a paladin's humility. Note it is different if a paladin is also a justiciar or ruler, because then s/he has been vested with the authority to judge. But a paladin shouldn't feel the need to judge in the abstract.)I don't know that a single wisecrack against the king should produce a fall, but it strikes me as more serious than a kick to the groin against a dangerous foe - because there is no excuse of the exingencies of the situation - and a step down an unhappy road for a paladin.</blockquote>

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